Probably Bryce Canyon is the most astonishing blend of exquisite beauty
and grotesque grandeur that the forces of erosion have ever produced. In
one aspect it is a gorgeous lacework design of frost and fire, the
playground of sylphs and fairies; in another it is a smoldering inferno
habited by goblins and demons; again, it seems as if some cataclysmic
force had shuffled together a dozen oriental cities into one spectacular
municipality. The joyous prevailing colors of this immense bowl of
luminous, flickering filigree heaped with jewels, are pink, red, orange,
purple, yellow and white; to these may be added as many other tints and
tones as one has patience to distinguish. Though Bryce is immense, yet
it is intimate, presenting to the eye a scintillating coral intaglio of
bizarre but definite plan, overspread with a halo of lavender mist.
It is not a canyon, but an amphitheatre of horseshoe shape, graven 1,000
feet deep into the sandstones on the eastern edge of the Paunsaugunt
Plateau, at the headwaters of the Pahreah River; it is approximately two
miles wide and three miles long and its rim is 8,000 feet in elevation.
The area of Bryce Canyon National Monument, which was created in 1923
and is administered by the _U. S. Department of Agriculture_, is 7,440
acres.
In the maze of architecture uprising from Bryce’s sunken gardens, where
pine, spruce and manzanita spread their greens, there are the styles of
China and Egypt, of the Toltecs, Incas, Greeks and Goths; but stronger,
perhaps, is the resemblance to those decaying Dravidian temples,
bursting with decoration, in the jungles of Burmah and Java: pagodas,
mosques, minarets, kiosks, fairy castles, cathedrals, theatres, flying
buttresses and stairways, suspension bridges, niched and fenestrated
walls, peristyles, colonnades, lotus columns, leaning towers, slim
spires, massive pylons, pyramids, obelisks, pilasters capped by tilted
disks, cones supporting cones, organs, shrines and altars. All of the
architects of antiquity might have drawn their inspiration from the
silent cities of Bryce.
And these dream-tissue cities in the realm of muted mystery have weird
inhabitants statued in variegated stone: giants and gnomes, popes and
queens, kneeling penitents, companies of marching soldiers, gargoyles,
fauns, satyrs, nymphs, witches, horses, dogs, lizards, frogs and
turtles--figures that seem to move, sway and posture in the flashing
play of light and shadow. The least vivid imagination needs a checkrein.
[Illustration: This map in a higher resolution]
[Illustration: _The Cathedral, Bryce Canyon_]
In the east, on a headland of the Table Cliffs, an outlier of the vast
Aquarius Plateau, the mesa rises by ramps and colonnades of pink and
buff to a level esplanade where stand a dozen glorified
Acropolises,--façades, friezes, pillars and porticoes, in ruins of rosy
marble. There, as everywhere, the marionettes of the sun continually
perform their evanescent dances. And this is but a vista chosen at
random from a hundred glorious panoramas.
Farther in the east, the amphitheatre opens out to make way for the
headstreams of the Pahreah River; the green fields surrounding the
village of Tropic may be seen and the ramparts of the Kaiparowitz
Plateau.
Bryce should be seen from the west rim in the morning, from the east rim
in the afternoon. The exquisite pageant of shimmering tints begins when
dawn thrusts the first spears of light into the abysses. The best
effects are obtained when the formations are between the beholder and
the sun; it is then that the mysterious, lambent flames flicker in the
distant temples and play upon altars and columns, warming them into
living, glowing color. Trails extend in both directions along the rim of
the Canyon from Bryce Lodge and the vistas change with almost every step
taken.
Sunset upon Bryce Canyon is another breath-taking manifestation of
Nature’s magic, followed by a solemn twilight of the innumerable gods
that dwell there in pomp and splendor. The visitor should see both dawn
and dusk transform the great amphitheatre, and should see it sleeping in
the noonday light.
Every visitor should take the trail into the depths of Bryce Canyon,
either on foot or horseback. Lacy designs and dainty figures, seen from
the rim, assume huge proportions when one is amongst them; there are
sunless grottoes and shadowed crypts, wafer walls pierced by many
windows, artists’ studios filled with half-finished models and
figurines, innumerable fantastic forms in bronze, jasper, ruby amethyst,
topaz and alabaster. Each turn in every innumerable aisle, alley and
corridor on Bryce’s intricate floor has its charming revelations of
unimagined contour and color.
[Illustration: _Trail into Bryce Canyon_]
[Illustration: _Pillars of Pegasus, Bryce Canyon_]